


Book of Days

by paperiuni



Series: Unwritten: Codas & Interludes [8]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Bittersweet, Episode Tag, Gen, M/M, Memories, Post-Episode: s03e11 Lost Souls, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-08 23:52:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17990894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperiuni/pseuds/paperiuni
Summary: Magnus wanders into the past. Alec follows best as he can.(A small coda for 3.11.)





	Book of Days

Magnus breaks gently from Alec's grip, muttering about the time and feeling drowsy.

He looks suddenly close to sleep, now that the danger is past and they're home. After healing Magnus, Catarina stayed for long enough to reinforce Magnus's faltering wards. The work of a couple of hours, they're not as seamless as Magnus's old handiwork, but they'll thwart a casual home invasion.

Alec knows that a warlock's magic is tied to their life. The Institute employs warlocks to reinforce its magical security, and keeping track of who's done up the wards at any given time is paramount.

He's rarely thought of that truth as anything beyond a bare, bland fact. People die all the time. Even warlocks, at times.

But Magnus lives. Even without his magic. Alec kisses his temple, indulging them both with the lingering gesture. "Go to bed. I'll be right there."

"Mmhm," Magnus says, not quite with Alec anymore, and goes.

When Alec is done with his paperwork, he does not find Magnus in bed. A lamp bathes Magnus's study nook in soft yellow light, and Magnus is stood at the desk, staring down at a leatherbound book. The pages curl with age at the edges.

Something about the picture that Magnus and the book make stops Alec in his tracks. The cant of his shoulders, taut under a weight. The careful way he turns a page.

Soft on his feet, Alec goes to bed. He falls asleep before Magnus follows.

 

The next day, Alec rustles in way after dinnertime, aching from his weekly sparring match with Izzy that he didn't want to cancel. They're all desperate for normalcy, those constants of life that remain even in the aftermath of tragedy.

Nobody answers his cautious holler. Magnus's phone sits dark on the coffee table.

Magnus is in the workroom, the door left ajar. He keeps a second desk and an armchair there, for what Alec assumes are thinking purposes, but the well-stocked shelves and arcane trinkets are starting to gather dust.

There are two things on the desk: A much newer-looking journal, folded open to its first blank page. Next to it is the box of Magnus's mementos, the lid tipped back to reveal the contents.

Quietly Alec closes the door.

 

The rest of the week passes. Alec ricochets between Institute concerns and Izzy's probes into the matter of the Gard prisoners and Jace's shifting moods. New York gives their grief no consideration: the onset of winter thins the days and deepens the nights, and the demons follow.

Slaying the literal ones is well within Alec's capacity. Pinning down the shadow that has settled across Magnus's shoulders proves more of a challenge.

Alec would think it's just the _everything_ of the situation that lends Magnus's eyes the sometime haunted look, that pulls him away from conversations and draws out his silences. He never shirks Alec. When Alec can't be with him, he has a line of other loved ones to fill his time.

But he's late to bed and too early to rise almost daily. He goes to the workroom and shuts the door. He comes to bed with ink from his fountain pen scrubbed into his cheek and his hair in disarray from fingers drawn through it, like he's been too deep in thought to care.

Sleepily, Alec extends a hand from under the covers. Magnus takes it, kisses his knuckles, and curls up well in his own space in the bed.

Magnus never forbids closeness. He just doesn't invite it, either.

 

On Sunday morning, Alec gathers a second mug of coffee and his courage. He knows he's painfully ill-equipped to give Magnus much more than his unconditional love, as Magnus muddles through his new state of existence.

Well. Unconditional love and freshly brewed coffee. He's faced trouble with worse preparations.

He never barges into the workroom, so he knocks first. A clatter of chair and a muffled curse later, Magnus comes to the door. He looks so _not_ put together, in his sleepwear and his face untouched by makeup, that Alec swallows both a laugh and a blooming ache in his throat.

"Coffee? Are you gonna rejoin the living at some point?"

"I should, shouldn't I?" Magnus takes the mug with eager fingers. "Thank you. That helps."

Not so stealthily, Alec leans against the doorframe, inserting himself on the threshold of this sacred space. "With the thinking?"

Magnus looks up at him slowly, and Alec watches the stages of a realization shift across his face. He gestures at the armchair, slid up to the desk from its usual spot. "Why don't you sit?"

Alec does. Magnus seats himself in the desk chair. The coffee sends steam curling up through the shaded light from the little stained-glass window. The desk is empty save for the same journal Alec saw there earlier, now filled to a rough halfway point in Magnus's beautiful, swooping handwriting. He doesn't like typing. Alec can understand that, but if this is some sudden bout of therapeutic journaling, it's been intense.

Then, Magnus reaches into a drawer and pulls out the memento box. His movements are calm and purposeful. Alec's heart turns a somersault.

They never finished this conversation. They glossed the argument over with a clinging hug and muttered apologies. Now, in this moment, it can't and won't even be the same conversation.

Magnus isn't immortal anymore. This might be the first time Alec has let himself think that thought with such clarity.

"When Iris dug into my mind—" Magnus raises his head, his profile limned by the sunlight. "It's a skill, to fight off mind magic. Doing it with a counterspell is more pleasant, of course, but it doesn't require magic."

Alec hears the space there to put in a coaxing question. He doesn't.

Magnus says, "One good alternative is strong emotion. Focusing on any memory that makes you feel deeply—grief, spite, love. Anything."

Alec maybe shouldn't have assumed that Magnus just deflected a ruthless user of the dark arts because he was that good. Or, he _is_ that good, but not without cost.

"Iris is back in the Gard now."

"It's not her I worry about." Magnus must know it's an effort for Alec not to look at the box.

Alec has no right to look at it. Magnus made that clear. Even if he hadn't, Alec's own sense of right and wrong whispers to him to avert his eyes. There are some doors you can't open on your own. You can only be invited in.

It is a bitter lesson— _you're not jealous, are you?_ —but he's tried to learn. He sits too straight in the sinkingly comfortable armchair.

"I threw everything I had at her. Which meant I came to think about many things I try to keep tucked away." Magnus exhales long and careful, as if he had a cracked rib. "Warlocks have long memories. But now, if my magic is gone, if my blood is human, how long will it be until I begin to forget?"

Briefly speechless, Alec finds his hand clutching his thigh. _Grief, spite, love._ How many losses did Magnus give up to Iris to plunder? How much death and pain?

"You're writing things down," he says. A stupid thing. Warlock minds don't decay with age. Right now, Magnus is physically in his prime, hale and well. Alec feared growing old with Magnus and yet without him, because Magnus would, inevitably, irrevocably, leave him behind.

Not anymore. Not as things stand right now.

The thought is too huge, a vertiginous void. Alec reels back from it.

"I am," Magnus says, as Alec presses himself back into the conversation. "This is a delicate subject, but I want you to know I'm not... hiding from you. I just..."

It's so rare for Magnus to fumble with his words. It pins Alec somewhere between rue and sympathy.

Magnus's hand lies, still and fine-boned, on the box. "For some of them, I'm the only person who remembers they ever lived. Family lines end. Memorials crumble. And most of them were just ordinary people, Alexander, but they mattered to me."

Alec has weathered a lot in the recent weeks. He can weather his own emotions, too, the acrid, creeping dread on one side and the deep, helpless love on the other.

"I know." Maybe that's the best he can give. The acknowledgment that Magnus has lived a dozen lives before Alec ever came into the world, has loved and lost and fought and laughed with people Alec will never know.

Alec could decide that it's enough. That this is his line in the sand. Some parts of Magnus do not belong to him, like some parts of him, however small, do not belong to Magnus. Magnus would understand.

There are lifetimes in the palm of Magnus's hand. If he lets them go, they'll vanish in the noise of the world. People die all the time.

Raising his head, Alec meets Magnus's eyes, and knows, again, that he wants to see Magnus looking back at him for the rest of his life.

"If you tell me," he says, "you won't be the only one."

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you thought I was done with Alec considering Magnus's past (and past loves), you thought wrong. :D
> 
> There's now a sequel: _[Rosemary for the Soul](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18078974)_
> 
> I'm on tumblr @[poemsfromthealley](https://poemsfromthealley.tumblr.com/) and twitter @[juneofthepen](https://twitter.com/juneofthepen). Come say hi and scream about Shadowhunters with me ♥


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